``What is often forgotten is that millions of
Africans were disenfranchised by a system of state-managed
repression, segregation and violence. These masses sacrificed their lives and livelihoods to liberate the country and have the moral right to claim back their land. This
legitimate need to right the historical wrongs should never be confused
with ZANU-PF’s attempts to manipulate history for its own selfish
interests.''

By Grasian Mkodzongi

March 11, 2010 -- Pambazuka News -- Zimbabwe’s land issue has generated unprecedented debates both within
and outside the country. The debates, which followed the dramatic
occupations of white farms by rural peasants in the late 1990s, are
generally polarised between those who support radical land reform and
those who support market-orientated reforms. The former stand accused of
supporting Mugabe’s regime while the latter are generally maligned as
neo-colonialists running a smear campaign against the ruling Zimbabwe AFrican National Union-Patriotic Frent (ZANU-PF).

An
unfortunate outcome of these polarities has been the trivialisation of
the land issue; land occupations have been depicted as simple acts of
political gimmickry; landless peasants who occupied these farms have
been branded as agents of agrarian and environmental destruction, and
are often considered to be in service to the "evil" regime of Robert
Mugabe. Some academics have even gone as far as branding the whole
process of land occupations, and the violence associated with it, as an
apocalyptic end of modernity.

In academia, supporters of radical land
reform are generally in the minority; this has made it extremely
difficult to challenge the current neoliberal orthodoxy, which
dominates land and agrarian reform policy making in many African
countries. The few scholars, who have openly challenged the "hostile"
neoliberal approach to argue for radical land reform, including Sam
Moyo, Paris Yeros and Mamood Mamdani, have often been accused of
colluding with Mugabe’s undemocratic regime.

Post-independence: white commercial farmers, black elite prosper

That Mugabe opportunistically used the land issue to boost his political
legitimacy is an undeniable fact. Indeed, the country’s collective
memory was conveniently manipulated to fit a set political agenda under
guise of the "Third Chimurenga" project. However, juxtaposed to Mugabe’s
gerrymandering and manipulation of historical memory is a reality that
many critics of Mugabe have so far failed to address. How can one
justify the continued existence of a dualistic land ownership structure
decades after independence, in a country whose struggle for liberation
crystallised around the land issue? How could such an unjust and
medieval property ownership structure be permanently sustained in a
country where 60 per cent of the population depends on land for their
livelihoods?

Another paradox of Zimbabwe’s independence is the extent to which white
farmers emerged unscathed by the raging fires of the liberation
struggle. Zimbabwe’s negotiated settlement, which led to independence in
1980, left white farmers constitutionally protected. Like Royal game,
they held the entire nation at ransom thanks to Lord Carrington, who
secured their private property and political rights before handing over a
poisoned state to the blacks. Mugabe’s reconciliatory rhetoric that
dominated the early years of independence led to the general belief
among white Rhodesians that independence was "business as usual", with
many whites continuing to enjoy colonial era privileges and existing in
white enclaves.

In the so-called "new Zimbabwe", white commercial
farmers continued to dominate the commercial farming sector, a key
strategic sector given the largely agrarian nature of Zimbabwe’s
economy. This gave them leverage over government policy, which they used
to secure their large estates from potential forceful acquisition. Above all, they voted for Ian Smith’s exclusively white Rhodesian Front
political party; a mockery of the ideals of a "united nation" propounded
by Mugabe’s nationalist administration.

On the other hand, the
peasantry in remote rural locations continued to eke out a living on
degraded patches of barren land, waiting for the "promised" land that
was at the core of the liberation struggle. However, such promises
failed to materialise; macroeconomic policies favoured landed
capitalists and black elites based in cities that generally enjoyed the
patronage of senior politicians. A result of the above was that most of
the land "recovered" by the government was diverted to ZANU-PF loyalists
through patronage networks.

Why then do many people decry the land invasions if history shows that
peasants were the major losers at independence? Given Zimbabwe’s
history, one wonders why white farmers were allowed to sell land back to
the government after 1980 instead of helping to contribute to the land
reform program as a form of reparations for the violence and plunder
suffered by many Africans during the colonial era. After all, most of
the large farms were acquired under unjust and illegal terms.

Justice
would have been better served if after securing independence, Mugabe’s
government had thrown away the 1979 Lancaster House Constitution in
favour of a just constitution based on the country’s historical
experiences. Why hang on to a constitution, which promoted the interests
of the very people that supported the wanton destruction of African
livelihoods, and the merciless bombing of civilians at Nyadzonya, which
to this day have never been fully accounted for. This would have allowed
an unfettered land reform program that was cognisant of our past and
righted the wrongful misdeeds of a few.

Instead, a dithering elitist
government failed to deliver one of the most precious prizes of our
independence: the land. For if so many people died at Chimoio, Nyadzonya
and in many operational zones, how could their souls rest in peace if
independence only resulted in the perpetuation of the status quo? Why
could we as a sovereign nation in the interest of morality and justice
not say to Britain and other world nations that so many people died for
this land, all they want is a fair share of their heritage?’ Is that not
a modest demand given our history?

Mugabe’s rhetoric on land should be
given serious consideration, however he should also be held accountable
for failing to stand up against neocolonial tactics that led to
unnecessary delays in recovering stolen property and for presiding over a
patrimonial system which helped to marginalise a large section of the
population. Much of the socialist rhetoric that appears in the country’s
Transitional Development Plan (TDP) was never put into practice,
instead an ahistorical Land Reform and Resettlement Programme (LRRP) was
adopted. This policy, much influenced by Britain and other agents of Western capitalism, left too much leverage with white farmers who were
able to dictate the pace of the land reform program, and in the
process, distort land markets to their advantage.

The result was that
the LRRP was too expensive to sustain for a postcolonial government with
limited resources. Moreover, those who were "chosen" for resettlement
were given land unfavorable to agriculture with limited support in terms
of infrastructure and farming inputs. Mugabe’s government, like its
colonial predecessor, was reluctant to extend full property rights to
the beneficiaries of the LRRP and instead opted to allow resettled
farmers to occupy land under insecure permits while at the same time
allowing white farmers to continue owning their land on a more secure
freehold basis. This perpetuated a system of insecure property rights in
communal areas that had been created during the colonial era within the
so-called "communal tenure" system.

History ignored

An analysis of the arguments against radical land reform reveals a
chronic failure by both journalists and academics to provide a balanced
overview of the Zimbabwean land issue; the causal factors of
landlessness steeped in the country’s history are often ignored. There
is a tendency to confuse the land issue with Mugabe’s political
expediency and in the process the baby is thrown away with the bath
water. The genuine need for land, which is reflected in many rural areas
across the country, is simply dismissed as Mugabe’s political
posturing.

What is often forgotten is that not very long ago millions of
Africans were deliberately disenfranchised by a system of state-managed
repression, segregation and violence. It is these masses who
sacrificed their lives and livelihoods to liberate the country and it is
these masses who have the moral right to claim back their land. This
legitimate need to right the historical wrongs should never be confused
with ZANU-PF’s attempts to manipulate history for its own selfish
interests.

What is also deeply disturbing about those who have argued against land
invasions is their total disregard for the views of the poor and
marginalised peasants who invaded these farms. On the rare occasions
when peasants are featured in short documentaries or academic articles,
they are often depicted as barbaric savages attacking white farmers and
ruining productive farms. In contrast, white farmers have generally been
given positive media coverage in the West – sentimental testimonials
telling stories of loss and ruin, agricultural equipment destroyed and
wildlife poached. These stories are often accompanied by graphic images
of dead wild animals, especially endangered species like rhinos and
elephants.

This "sadistic" imagery has generated sympathy for white
farmers, by portraying them as hard-working people who became victims
of Robert Mugabe’s "evil regime". The plight of many rural farmers who
have struggled to survive since the country was liberated decades ago is
generally overlooked. They have no one to tell their stories of
survival to, and local "native" intellectuals, generally far removed from
the village, have failed to inform the world about the peasants'
precarious existence: landlessness, water shortages and disease.

Black peasantry misrepresented

What is
often suggested in the studies of fly-past researchers is the notion
that black peasants have an inherent lack of basic environmental
knowledge and that they are incapable of feeding themselves. Across
Europe, ignorance about the historical background to Zimbabwe’s land
issue among ordinary people runs deep; remarks about how the Zimbabwe
government allowed unskilled rural farmers to occupy farms are
commonplace. The current food shortages facing the country are simply
blamed on incompetent peasants taking over white farms.

It has become fashionable to project Zimbabwe as "a bread basket" before
the land invasions and a "basket case" after land invasions. This has
helped to support the assumption that without white farmers the country
could not feed itself. What is often not mentioned is that the white
farmer in Africa is generally an administrator; he does not physically
grow crops himself. His black troops produce on his behalf. However he
gets the lion’s share of the profits because he controls the means of
production.

Moreover, it is easily forgotten that in the early years of
colonial occupation in the 1890s, European settlers in Rhodesia survived
on grain produced by Africans until The British South Africa Company
(BSAC) deliberately destroyed a booming African agriculture in favour of
promoting European agriculture after the so called "gold rush" proved
to be largely false. Against all odds, Africans have been feeding
themselves even during the depression years of the 1930s when the
colonial government introduced the Maize Control Act, which helped to
distort the grain market in order to protect European farmers.

Apart from the above, there is another argument based on neoliberal
thinking, which says that land reform was supposed to be carried out in
an orderly way in order to harness "white skills". This, it is argued,
would protect the productive potential of these farms. The question is
why didn’t these white farmers share their skills before the onset of
the land invasions? How can one account for the poverty and dislocation
of many farm workers who lost their livelihoods once a farmer decided
they were no longer needed after many years of hard labour with minimum
remuneration?

This argument is also based on a false assumption that black farmers
cannot grow crops without white supervision. Most large-scale commercial farms have historically relied on black labour. If large-scale commercial farms are
largely run by black workers who with time have acquired advanced
technical skills to operate farm machinery, supervise the large-scale
growing of commercial crops including tobacco and wheat, why then can
blacks fail to do the same for themselves if given the land and the
support required to run successful agricultural enterprises?

The image of the black farmer as a permanent subsistence farmer has
become part of the official discourse about land and agrarian reform
simply because for many decades black farmers have not been given the
chance to invest in productive agriculture. It’s a historical fact that
white agricultural success was based on expensive state subsidies,
access to cheap labour and extension services, which allowed them to
make profits even during the difficult years of economic stagnation.
Such services were not accessible to black farmers, who had to make do
with very little financial and technical support from central
government.

While it is true that land invasions did impact on agricultural
production; critics of the program have based their arguments on
emotions rather than facts. Since the land invasions took place, no
significant longitudinal study based on empirical research has been
carried out to justify these arguments. Nobody knows to what extent the
land invasions have impacted on agricultural production across the
country. Moreover in trying to access such impacts, one has to take into
account climatic factors like recurring droughts, which have
historically affected agricultural production.

Simplistic arguments
biased against the peasantry have led to the trivialisation of an issue
that is of paramount importance to Zimbabwe culturally, historically and
economically. For land is not only the resource we have in abundance,
it’s the only resource that sustains three-quarters of the Zimbabwean
population.

Given the above, land invasions were inevitable and necessary to ensure
peasants "got a piece of the cake". Of course one cannot expect such a
radical program to take place without any form of disruption. While
it’s painful in the short term, land invasions have helped a significant
number of propertyless peasants to not only recover land, but to enjoy
a sense of restitution which has a healing effect given the country’s
tortured history. They also helped to break the monopoly of white
farmers in commercial agriculture by opening up this key sector to black
farmers. Moreover recent research by World Bank economists has proven
that large commercial farms are not very productive compared to family-operated smallholder farms; they are also a source of political
instability as our recent history has demonstrated. Breaking up large
commercial farms in favour of more efficient smallholder entities makes
economic sense and promotes political stability.

Full property rights for peasants

What the Zimbabwean government should do now is to stop dilly-dallying
and extend full property rights to peasants settled under the A1 Scheme
to provide security and incentives for agricultural investment. It
should also offer financial and technical support for those farmers who
want to venture into commercial farming. Such a process requires
non-partisan support from all those who benefited from land reform. It
also requires a mechanism to recover land from those who are hoarding
unproductive farms. This could be achieved through a land audit and a
policy restricting farm ownership to a "one person one farm" basis.

If
the above measures were implemented, Zimbabwe would lead the way as the
only country in postcolonial Africa to implement the most radical
transfer of property in the 21st century. It would set an example for
Zimbabwe’s neighbours, South Africa and Namibia, which are still
slumbering under the stupor of market-driven land reform, with the
inevitable risk of political instability as marginalised
peasants are likely to resort to violence to recover land.